China Mama was pretty bad. My default rating for mediocre restaurants is three stars but this one was so bad that even my dad complained about it, and he usually isn't vocal about Chinese restaurants.
The place is not that authentic. We ordered a variety of dishes and most of them missed the mark. Let's review:
-Gan bian si ji dou (string beans): This was not that authentic. It wasn't shriveled enough, and they didn't have any shrimp on it. The beans should have fried a little bit more. Flavor was decent although more salt than anything.
-Spicy wontons: Decent. They give you a lot of wontons in a small bowl. I thought the sauce was good.
-Lettuce wrap: My dad was so devastated by this dish. It looked like they used frozen vegetables (carrots, peas, etc) in the meat. My dad was extremely unhappy that this dish was botched.
-Spicy tendon: I usually finish this dish very happily but this one was so bad. The tendon was way too thick and hard to chew. The sauce was good though. It was such a shame.
-Xiao long bao (juicy pork dumplings): No soup, no flavor, what is this
-Sheng jian bao (pan fried pork buns): Where do I begin? The dough was incredibly wrong. These looked like the white fluffy buns you find in cha shao bao (pork buns). The bread was really soggy and the bottom was not fried enough. Meat was mediocre. I was so sad because this is one of my favorite dishes. My dad speculated that they just bought some buns from the frozen aisle and served it to us.
Service was okay. But not enough to overcome the extremely mediocre (or dare I say, pretty bad) food here.